The following are Excerpts from "A History of Stepping," by Elizabeth C. Fine, Ph.D., * from her book Soulstepping: African American Step Shows (copyright 2003) published by the University of Illinois Press.

People give widely varying answers to the simple question, when and where did stepping begin? Some say that they have always stepped and that it goes back to Africa. Others relate it to African American fraternity and sorority pledging rituals of marching online, and date it to the 1940's.1 While many African movement and communication patterns are clearly evident in stepping, the tradition was forged on college campuses in black fraternities and sororities out of the African heritage of speech, song, and dance. The ritual performance of stepping in black Greek-letter societies may have developed in part from African American Masonic rituals.

The first initiation held by Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, founded in 1906, was held at the Masonic Hall, also known as Odd Fellows Hall and Red Men's Hall. During the initiation "the lockers of the lodge were broken open in order that attire more suited to the purpose than civilian clothing might be secured." This close association with an African American masonic society suggests that early fraternities and sororities may have modeled some of their rituals on those of other secret societies of the time. Since, as Jacqui Malone demonstrates, mutual aid societies were known for their competitive drill teams, it is possible that the black Greek-letter society tradition of marching online, from which stepping likely evolved, may have been borrowed from such societies. Indeed, noting the popularity of drill teams in African American communities, Lawrence Ross says, "I would assume that stepping actually came from drill team movements."2

The earliest written reference to public ritual dancing by pledges at Howard University that might indeed be stepping appears in the 1925 student newspaper, the Hilltop. In an article called "Hell-Week," Van Taylor describes the pledging activities of Omega Psi Phi and Kappa Alpha Psi fraternities: "What desire is this that will cause young men, stalwart of frame, and rugged of heart and mind, demurely and aesthetically to dance about the campus as if in time to the fairy Pipes of Pan?"3 The phrase "the fairy Pipes of Pan" suggests that the men are performing to a music or beat that only they can hear; as in stepping, there is no accompanying music. Since the Hilltop only began publishing in 1924, it is difficult to know exactly when pledges performed movements that would be considered stepping. But it is interesting to note that within 18 years of the formation of the first Black Greek-letter society, a public ritual dance associated with pledging was performed by two fraternities at Howard University.

Stepping evolved at different rates on various campuses. Kappa Alpha Psi member Thomas Harville, who pledged at West Virginia State College, says that in 1940, his fraternity participated in group singing, often while they were holding hands or moving in a circle, but they did not step. Another Kappa said that his fraternity began stepping in the 1940s and developed stepping from marching on line while pledging to the group: "Through the years brothers added singing and dancing, and in recent years we started using canes when we step." This information corroborates a claim in a Wall Street Journal article that stepping's "synchronized and syncopated moves date back to the 1940s, when lines of fraternity pledges marched in lockstep around campus in a rite of initiation." Julian Bond reports that he could remember stepping contests when he was a student at Morehouse in the late 1950s. Alpha Kappa Alpha member Anne Mitchum Davis, who pledged at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, states that her sorority did not step in the 1950s, but they did do "synchronized dancing," which was more like ballet, than the "stomping kinds of things" that men did. Fraternity alumni working at Virginia Tech in 1984 recall that at their various colleges and universities in the 1950s, blocking or stepping was mainly a singing event, with some movement, usually in a circle.4

Notes
1. Tyrone Petty, personal interview with author, 16 May, 1997, Washington, D.C.; Elizabeth Fine, Ph.D., "Stepping, Saluting, Cracking, and Freaking: The Cultural Politics of African-American Step Shows," The Drama Review 35 (1991): 40.

2. Charles H. Wesley, The History of Alpha Phi Alpha: A Development in College Life [1920, 1950], rev. ed. (Chicago: Foundation, 1991), 21; Jacqui Malone, Steppin' on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 177; Lawrence Ross, phone interview with author, 21 July, 1999. For more on choreographed steps within black Masonic rituals, see Paul Rich, "Freemasonry, The Greeks, and Stepping," paper to be presented at the First National Conference on Stepping, April 6-7, 2001, Virginia Tech.

3. Van Taylor, "Hell-Week." Hilltop (25 November , 1925): 3.

4. Thomas Harville, personal interview with author, 4 March, 1990, Johnson City, Tennessee; Melinda J. Payne, "Stepping Out on Campus," Roanoke Times and World News (15 October, 1987): A1, A8; Marilyn Freeman and Tina Witcher, "Stepping into Black Power," Rolling Stone (24 March, 1988): 143-53; Stephon D. Henderson, personal interview with author, 25 May, 1995, Howard University; Anne Mitchem Davis, personal interview with author, 25 May, 1995, Howard University; Florence M. Jackson, "Blocking: A General Overview," Unpublished mss., Virginia Tech, 1984.

*Elizabeth C. Fine Ph.D., Associate Professor, is Director of the Humanities Program in the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Virginia Tech. She holds a joint appointment in the Department of Communication Studies.

Some of the information above was taken from www.latinosstep.com